You want another small-form modules?
Fine.
While everyone else is doing their parts with the big projects, I've been sketching.
The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time.
Notes are done, I just need to make a map and I'm ready to play. (and then I need to write it)
Start with the ideas that Lovecraft is known for, remove the names and actual things associated with Lovecraft and just rebuild up from the basic concepts. No Cthulhu, no Necronomicon, no Arkham. Sorta like if some fuckin' moron were to make a game that might remind one of D&D in some ways but they left out dragons, orcs, and +1 swords.
If your players aren't so scared that they're shitting their balls, it means they've already died.
(OK, not really, but I come up with some weird taglines I can never use, and what else is a blog for?)
I couldn't answer my wife's "Why would anyone go on this adventure?" question with a carrot, so I answered it with a stick.
For character levels 0 - ∞.
Fun for all ages, in case you were wondering.
An adventure in Weird Fantasy.
Fine.
While everyone else is doing their parts with the big projects, I've been sketching.
The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time.
Notes are done, I just need to make a map and I'm ready to play. (and then I need to write it)
Start with the ideas that Lovecraft is known for, remove the names and actual things associated with Lovecraft and just rebuild up from the basic concepts. No Cthulhu, no Necronomicon, no Arkham. Sorta like if some fuckin' moron were to make a game that might remind one of D&D in some ways but they left out dragons, orcs, and +1 swords.
If your players aren't so scared that they're shitting their balls, it means they've already died.
(OK, not really, but I come up with some weird taglines I can never use, and what else is a blog for?)
I couldn't answer my wife's "Why would anyone go on this adventure?" question with a carrot, so I answered it with a stick.
For character levels 0 - ∞.
Fun for all ages, in case you were wondering.
An adventure in Weird Fantasy.
Ooh, me so H.P. baby. Lovecraft you long time.
ReplyDeleteHmm. Is Lovecraft a new form of magical sphere?
Do the first 666 orders come with a free Barry White CD and a bottle of wine? ;-)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I'll buy that adventure when it comes out.
Ooooooh, Jim. Straight to the deed without dinner and/or flowers? That's bold!
ReplyDeleteI like that in a man. ;)
I do enjoy your small-form modules. I hope there's a way to make them adequately profitable for you, because the form factor cries out old-school while the production values cry renaissance. I love reading them, and I'm looking forward to running them.
ReplyDeleteAs for Lovecraft, bless you for stripping out all the obvious trappings to focus on the part of the horror that is genuinely Lovecraftian but that hardly anyone every does justice to - the collapse of an overconfident worldview when confronted by the hidden, alien truth of the cosmos.
Now you're talking... I do so love the modules
ReplyDeleteI also like the small modules. They're easy to insert into a campaign, and at least I seem to get about 1d6 sessions worth of play out of one (plus the long-term consequences for the campaign), which is just a great return for the price. I also like having a bandolier of these things to scatter into the sandbox; having more enhances the method of using them at all.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, there is a certain overhead to writing any adventure at all, so I can understand the attraction of adding 50% pages of elaboration and doubling the price when that can be done with just a minor extra effort. And if the lower profile of adventure modules (and the fact that some players don't use them) causes the audiences to buy less of them, then it's a tricky thing financially.
One observation I might make is that adventure modules suffer in publicity for their nature: they don't seem to attract much in the way of discussion or opinions from the public, which means that they don't attract sales even when the product is remarkably good. Death Frost Doom is pretty much an outlier in this regard.
Do think up some way to make these small modules more profitable. At least creating them should become more routine in the practical aspects of book design and printing as experience accrues, which helps make even more modest returns attractive.
Now that's good news!
ReplyDelete"I couldn't answer my wife's 'Why would anyone go on this adventure?' question with a carrot, so I answered it with a stick."
ReplyDeleteIt better be a really big stick because my wife plays really willful characters.